Storage consolidation can support centralizing and sharing storage resources among multiple data storage systems. Storage consolidation architectures can address limitations associated with locally attached storage and address growing data storage demands of information rich business environments.
One such architecture may use storage servers or storage area network (SAN) based storage consolidation. A single server or SAN device may contain multiple volumes that may be mapped to various user systems. For example, in an enterprise with hundreds of users, a single storage server may be used to host a volume for each user to boot and execute software from. The user machines may be thin clients connecting to their storage volumes over a network. Thus all of the enterprise storage may be consolidated in one, or a few, storage servers improving manageability of storage resources.
Since storage consolidation may involve one, or few, storage servers answering to multiple clients, hard disk access at the server or SAN devices may significantly increase. This may be particularly so during peak times for the booting of clients, such as in the morning. These clustered boot operations may reduce the client boot time and negatively affect productivity.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.